my vn slowguts has been out for a bit now. ive been considering doing a little postmortem about it so here’s that, i think!!

first of all i cannot believe this thing released in february and we are now in april!! i had to go lay down and die for a while after finishing this thing (despite its fairly short length) so i was out of commission for a good while after finishing it.. part of me def wanted to dive into my next project(s) basically instantly after, and to an extent i sorta did? i started planning them, at the very least. im planning to really lock into finishing the draft for my current project basically as soon as i finish this little writeup so that’ll be that!! it’ll be a little story about making art, because i think about that sorta thing all the time.

what i also always always think back on is how many people ended up telling me they read the damn vn too.. frankly i was hardly expecting anyone to read it, but hearing that people liked it made my day for a while. i did always have the feeling that, once i finally got something OUT, id be really happy if anyone told me about reading it AND I WAS VERY RIGHT!!! i heard a lot about people sorta catching what it was i was trying to put down here, and that made me feel super whole, to a shameful extent.. if u ever feel like talking to me abt my stupid work this is an open invitation to do so . im a very lonely girl :,) just kidding kinda idk unless

“but ame, what IS IT you were putting down?” i’d be surprised if a lot of people reading slowguts asked this. i feel like its sorta in-your-face, which i dont really consider a flaw, at least not for this text lol… but at the same time i sorta think about a lot of angles when it comes to anything im writing, to a point where it cant even be called “subtext,” in fact id be surprised if these ideas were easily picked up just from the main text of slowguts by just about anyone…

to get the obvious out of the way, slowguts is inspired by my real life experiences with dissociation. there couldnt be a better time and place to go into detail about it than a post about slowguts but i still feel pretty hesitant to go fully into it lol . well if you read it itll probably be obvious, to anyone who’d get it anyway. heard a lot of people relating to it from this angle too, to the point of it maybe being too raw at times? lol.. but thats not a quality im ashamed of neither. sorry to anyone affected tho

from that angle, one of the central statements i wanted to give off was.. the idea that you can’t so easily cast off parts of yourself as easily as it seems sometimes. that seeing something that came out of you and thinking of it as monstrous, and to be gotten rid of, will do more harm than good . a lot of things in life are what you make of them, and that goes double for the things that happen in your head. some courses of action will do a lot more harm in the long term than they are worth!!! (so preachy…)

less a central thesis and more of a central theme, the twisting of love. once again this is so central to the story i sorta feel like a bumbling fool typing about it here but i guess if im to make this blogpost about it at all i might as well, right?

a lot of actions which “shouldnt” be loving end up signifiers of love, especially during the epilogue.. obviously its because it makes me horny. getting that out of the way right now its because it makes me really horny. but i think the idea of accepting abuse, to an extent, and thinking of even those actions as different types of love. this ties into how i sorta thought of irida and null as having something uncomfortably “parental” about them… something no one i’ve talked to really picked up on, i think because its not really even present as subtext and i basically imagined it all in my head and forgot to write about it!! but even so, the idea of despising something you yourself came to raise, in a way, was central for me when i was solidifying slowguts as an idea.

how could that even be, after all? what a weird world, where you can feel that about your own offspring, right? its odd odd odd.

and don’t get me started on the weird ownership sorta inherent to this idea of parenthood. in my head that was all there lol

speaking of dissociation,, i think also fairly self evident, especially with certain scenes where i made sure to deal with it in as heavy a hand as possible (lmao) i wanted to give off the feeling of how terrifying psychosis can be. delusions aren’t to be completely demonized either if u ask me, but what they can be is EXTREMELY SCARY.. my life a horror movie!!!!

when it comes to visual inspirations… i wish i had more to talk about here. something in specific to cite. really i just wanted to make a big tentacle-ish eroguro msgk. and i wanted her to have gurowings. i dont remember getting the idea from any specific place… at least one person said null looked like a miku of sorts but that was never really an inspiration i think . i recognize her hair guts look a lot like pinocchioP’s “what’s inside” miku. kinda hate that localized title btw, but its official so what can you do i guess ??

it took me a while to get irida’s hair just right. she looked entirely different at first, but i banged out her final design after doing a lot of aimless sketching on my little sketchbook… the one i ended up finalizing randomly looked a lot like chii, so i went for it!! null’s design came first, so the idea was to have a lot of the same notes as null, only “looser.” that’s why she has those weirdly loose, weirdly low hair ties… in case it wasn’t obvious idk lol

honestly its getting tedious writing this out so ill cap it off quickly talking abt my experience working on the novel..

i got some good responses to the snippets of text i was showing oomfies as i wrote, and from people i forced to beta read as well. which surprised me!! my nerves are always always at their worst when im writing. i have so little experience with it!! im sure it shows, at certain points, or even in these postsgdfhbdfh,,,

even so i can’t help but write anyway… write write write… so much unfinished stuff, for many reasons, some of which aren’t even my fault!! i think. i always dreamt of finally getting something out… for a while, having something out felt straight up unreal. a part of me still can’t believe i’m a post “ame debut” world?? its funny because feb 16th was just another day for everyone else in the world, and slowguts is just another vn to anyone else in the world… but that’s how it is!! that’s alright!!! it means the world for me just the same

i also felt some pressure over thinking i had to keep my art pretty consistent… despite loving art, and some people liking my art output somehow, i am anything but consistent!!!! i especially stressed out over the cgs… for some of them i felt like i was taking so, so many liberties lol.. cant help but feel like some of the expressions look a bit out of place still. i really should probably care less, though. its fine that my greasy fingerprints are all over this thing, right? you read it to see me, in a way. even if you don’t know who i am, that is me.

thank you for reading me!! especially if you cared enough to read this all the way. by by~~